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freelance work

This is quite random but since I've lost my job, I've decided to try for a job that will actually happy; graphic design. The problem is that after having a long discussion with a friend of mine who works as a graphic designer for a medical company he said that the best way to get work is to freelance for free until you get a name for yourself. So with that in mind, does anyone know any local businesses, small sites etc that might want any graphic design work for free? I'll try to set up an online art portfolio soon too so there are examples of my stuff as well. I know it's a long shot but meh.

I don't know if this is what you mean, but my little brother is an independent painter / decorator. He is currently looking for a new a business card type deal. I tried to make him one and it sucked really badly. If thats not what you mean then no worries.

Yeah that's the sort of thing dude. Anything to get my name around so when I apply for jobs I can say "I done this for them and that for those guys". If you send me some details of what he wants I can try and makes few designs for him to chose from

I'm with Ben on this one Pix. For one thing, yeah, you may get your name out there but you'll have your name out there associated with doing freebies, and people will take the piss. They'll start to expect you to do shit without charging for it, and that's completely counter-productive.

You should probably just talk to Mark, save a lot of time. He's a great graphics designer, and he's self-employed, after all.

Well ultimately I'm aiming to get an in-house job somewhere as opposed to staying freelance, so the whole people taking the piss wouldn't really be a massive issue. My mate done the exact same thing to get in the job he's at now. Worked freelance for nothing for a while until he had enough experience to apply for an in-house job at the company he's with now.

Either way the pricing thing is pretty much a moot point if I can't get anyone willing to have me do graphics stuff for them.

As much as I agree with Ben with regards to never doing anything for free, because it makes it harder to ever get paid thereafter but that's exactly how I got started 22 years ago and I'd never have got my first job as a graphic designer had I not had a portfolio to show the guy at the interview. The difference is, even though I didn't get any money for my work, I went for a barter system.

When I was designing album covers, I'd exchange them for things that I needed at the time so if someone wanted a 7" cover designed, then I'd ask them to buy me a few sets of guitar strings as payment rather than paying me money. When I was designing the ads for the local rehearsal and recording studio, it was on the agreement that I didn't have to pay for ANY rehearsal time whatsoever as long as I was still creating their ads on a monthly basis. The first website I built for someone other than myself was for a travel agent and I got them to give me pesetas for when I was going to the Canaries but that's the closest I ever got to being paid Sterling.

The most important thing mate... confidence. Seriously. I'd never had a job in my life when I went for the graphic design job and the guy that owned the company asked me if I could use Photoshop... I said yeah... Aldus Pagemaker... yeah... Quark Xpress.. yeah... Freehand... yeah... so he asked me to come in for a half day and show them what I could do. I had never used any of those things in my life and was still using the Amiga at the time so all I'd ever used was Pagestream 2.2 for layouts and either Deluxe Paint IV AGA and Pixel Pro as the graphics software. I went in, sat down, and they gave me a fucking health and safety leaflet to design for BAA but I did it, and they took me on. That's the only experience I ever had working for a company, and it only lasted for 18 months before leaving to start up my own design company. If it hadn't been for the leaflets, posters, abum covers etc that I was able to show them.... I wouldn't even have got as far as showing them what I could do.

SO... as much as it pains me to admit it, you're right - you do need to build up a portfolio but I'd urge you to take SOME form of payment otherwise people will continue to use you for free and won't ever want to pay you even if you end up doing it professionally. I've known so many people who have ended up having to keep doing shit for free because they did it free once.

If we had any spare jobs to do mate, I'd send some your way in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, we just don't have the work ourselves as it's mostly programming.

Hope you get something sorted out mate, really do. The design industry isn't a tough one to stay in, once you're there, because your work tends to speak for itself. I think you'll be a lot happier than you were before.

Oooooooh it's an invisible signature... oooooooooh!!"If you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways."
Linus Torvalds

Do you have like a shopping precinct / street/ area near by that has a lot of independent shops rather than big chains? Try them for stuff like that - could be anything from designing in store point of sale stuff (price tickets?) to magazine/newspaper adverts - If you'd seen that advert thing my boss PAID for that I put on FB to go in a local magazine and you can do better than that you'll do fine.

Wish you all the best with it though pal and if I think any shit up that'll be of use I'll let you know.

Oooooooh it's an invisible signature... oooooooooh!!"If you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways."
Linus Torvalds